A surgical environment, such as an operating room, is typically segregated into a sterile field and a non-sterile field. The segregation of the operating room, including personnel, between the sterile field and the non-sterile field is necessary to minimize the likelihood of infection in the patient as the result of the surgical procedure.
The sterile field and the non-sterile field are not defined by physical boundaries, but rather by surfaces that are sterile and surfaces that are not sterile. Sterile surfaces are aseptic and free of potential infectious organisms. Non-sterile surfaces in an operating room are very clean. However, sterilizing procedures which are time consuming and costly have not been utilized on the non-sterile surfaces. Therefore, surfaces that have no been subjected to sterilizing procedures are considered to be in the non-sterile field.
The sterile field includes all surfaces that have been deliberately prepared to be sterile. A non-exhaustive list of sterile surfaces include the prepared surgical site on the body of the patient, the drape that is positioned over the patient's body and around the surgical site, the surfaces from the chest to the waist of the personnel in the sterile field as well as the surfaces from the elbows to the tips of the fingers provided the personnel have been scrubbed according the prescribed protocol, sterilized surgical gowns, sterilized gloves and sterilized surgical instruments. Other surfaces may also be prepared as sterile.
Other surfaces, while very clean, are not considered sterile, and in order to maintain the sterile field, non-sterile surfaces are not allowed to contact surfaces in the sterile field. Therefore, great care must be taken to ensure the sterility of the sterile field.
In some surgical procedures fluid, such as blood, is taken from the patient and processed in the non-sterile field. The transfer of the fluid from the sterile field to the non-sterile field can be achieved by handing a surgical instrument such as a syringe from personnel in the sterile field to personnel in the non-sterile field by refraining from making hand to hand contact. However, the transfer of the fluid from the non-sterile field to the sterile field is difficult to achieve, as the fluid must be transferred from the non-sterile surgical instrument to a sterile surgical instrument without contaminating the sterile field.